


How (not) to cope when your brother is turned into a zombie that might or might not still be him

by Lwoorl



Series: Talon!Dick Grayson Series [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen, No editing we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-09 11:55:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lwoorl/pseuds/Lwoorl
Summary: Tim realizes he's (just maybe) been fucking up a little bit.





	1. Hypothesis

**Author's Note:**

> I had NO idea for the title so I just wrote whatever came to my mind at the moment. If you have suggestions for a better title I'm all ears.

“You need to stop fuckign Grayson up.”

“What the hell are you talking about, demon spawn?”

Tim sees Damian crossing his arms with the corner of his eye and decides that, as much as he would like to keep ignoring him and continue reading his book, he doesn't want to rile the kid up enough for Damian to attack him. Besides, it might, just  _ might _ , be actually important, it's not like Damian tends to ambush him on his free time to talk about the weather.

He closes the copy of one hundred years of solitude and stands up to place it back on the shelf, before returning to where he was sitting and looking at the brat.

“Alright, so what the hell do you mean by 'fucking Dick up’?”

Damian frowns and walks towards him. “Don't act like you don't know, Drake.” He spits while poking Tim on the chest, who immediately slaps his hand away.

“I really don't.” Tim tries to say on the most non conflictive voice he can muster. The brat just seems to get angrier at that, as he clenches his jaw and sends daggers towards Tim.

“Tt, I suppose I underestimated your level of stupidity.” Damian responds, the smug way he says it making Tim want to bristle and retorts with his own rude comment, but he has learned the best way to deal with the brat is to ignore his insults instead of give more fuel to the fire. 

After a beat of silence in which Tim refuses to join the brat's taunts,  Damian continues “I'm talking about how you jump anytime Grayson speaks.” 

“I don't-”

“You do!” Damian interrupts him, pointing at him and angrily stomping on the floor. “You refuse to look at him anytime you're in the same room and get visible tense when he says anything, we  _ just _ got Grayson to speak and now he won't talk when you're around! You're fuckign him up!”

Tim scowls. Ok, maybe it's true he's a bit tense whenever Dick is around,  _ maybe _ he's gotten a little jumpy since his brother was allowed to move out of the cell in the cave, but he didn't think it was that noticeable and, honestly, can you blame him? Who wouldn't be a bit stressed having a talon walking around their home? 

“I swear, Drake, I won't forgive you if you keep hampering his recovery, we're supposed to help him and yet-!”

“Like you were helping at all!” Tim snaps, Damian isn't even allowed to read the results of the medical tests they've been running, much less to help Tim and Bruce to actually cure their brother, Tim's the last person the kid has any right to accuse of being unhelpful. “What have you done to help, exactly? I haven't seen you helping with the cure, and you aren't going with Jason to collect information on the owls either, if anyone is unhelpful here it's you!”

“Maybe if any of you let me do  _ anything _ -!” 

“Maybe if you weren't so useless!” 

“Drake, I'm going to-!” Damian closes his  mouth at the middle of what was probably a death threat, fast enough Tim actually hears the sound of his teeth clashing together, then the kid bites his lip and breathed through his nose, before exhaling a mouthful of hair, seemingly calming down. 

Damian is  _ not _ the kind of person that keeps his temper on check, and he's absolutely  _ not _ the kind of person able to  _ calm himself down _ . 

This is one of the most terrifying things Tim has ever seen.

“Tt. This isn't about you...” He pauses, moving his gaze to the closest bookcase.  “...Or me.” 

The kid shallows, closing his fists at his sides and tilting his head up, giving Tim a ridiculous serious stare “If you can't act normal with Grayson then avoid getting close to him… I promise Drake, if you end hurting him I will get as close as killing you as I can without breaking father's rule.” 

With that the kid storms out, leaving behind an astonished Tim. 

Somehow, a death threat would have been better than saying he's still going to respect Batman's rule.

Some moments after Damian leaves, Tim feels a pang of shame, he doesn't feel guilty because of what he said to the kid, nor is he afraid Damian will go through with his threat, but...

He didn't realize the way he was acting around Dick was so obvious- No, he did, he just didn't expect to be confronted about it.

It's not that he thinks it's a good thing to do, he should be able to suppress his reactions, he isn't even trying at this point… But it's not that easy having a walking corpse with the face of his brother around the house, he should be entitled to, at the very least, feel a bit unnerved, shouldn't him?

It's not like any of them can really help Dick without finding a cure to his condition first, their focus should be on that, not on forcing themselves to act around him like everything was the same and hope he will magically go back to normal. They don't even know for sure what the transformation did to his brain! How is anyone hoping to treat a sickness they don't fully understand? No, They can't. Tim tries to shake off Damian's words and takes the book from where he put it. 

One can't expect to cure cancer with homeopathy, the same way he doesn't really think they can help Dick without first reversing whatever made him a talon. They can get him psychological treatment afterwards, but Tim isn't going to force himself to act as if his brother was just like he's always been, and he isn't going to start avoiding Dick as if he was running away from him.

Either of those options would hurt too much

Tim supposes, though, that he can at least work on suppressing the reflex to jump whenever Dick's close, even if just so Damian doesn't throw a knife at him. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember that I literally feed of comments and if you don't leave any I'm gonna starve, at this point anything from a single smiling face to a "I hated this, please kill yourself" would make my day.


	2. Observations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I accidentally made this chapter way too long. So. Sorry for that. Not that writing more is a bad thing, in fact you should be glad I'm giving you even more words to feast on, you savage beasts! But God I hate when chapters length varies wildly. So, yeah.
> 
> Also. I usually never add warnings to my fics cause I just don't know how ao3's warnings work, specifically I never know when to use the one for depictions of violence cause, should I use it if there's a fight? If there's blood? If someone has a gun? I never know! But I wrote an scene a little bit bloody that I think qualifies so I'm adding that warning.

His mom places one hand on top of his head, gracefully moving her fingers through Tim's hair, then moving it to a side of his face, and giving his little baby cheek a squeeze before leaving him, going back to lying at her side. Tim looks upwards, towards her face, but in the darkness of the alley the only features he can distinguish are her bright, red lips.

She opens her mouth to say something, and even though Tim can't quite make out her voice he does understand the meaning. _“I'm glad I could come with you today.”_

“I'm glad too. We're almost there.” He says, reaching to take her hand and guide her towards the crime scene.

“You brought someone.” Batman says, appearing behind him, completely out of nowhere. Tim's used to it, and instead of jumping a meter in the air he just turns around to look at him.

“Yeah, I brought someone. Mom wanted to see my work.”

“You brought someone.” Batman repeats. “You brought someone, so we need to sit down.”

“Oh. Right.” Tim feels his face heat up, how could he forget? He brought someone so they have to sit down, yet he didn't bring any chairs with him. What an idiot.

He looks around for something they could use and finds an old couch behind a dumpster.

After some struggle he's able to move it to where his mother and Batman are waiting.

Batman just nods and sits down, Tim and his mother following suit.

“So, the case.” He says. He thinks he knew what he came here for, but now he isn't so sure. Something about a crime scene?

Batman points towards the dumpster from where he retrieved the couch. Now that Tim looks at it he realizes there's a body next to it, he must have missed it the first  time.

Somehow he's aware it's someone he knows, but he can't tell who, or what happened to them.

He needs to get closer to see, but he can't stand up, he brought someone so he has to sit down. He reaches towards the body, but it's too far away.

He steals a glance at Bruce, (Because it _is_ Bruce now, his cowl is gone. The Batman suit replaced with a bathrobe.) He looks at Tim frowning while taking a sip of the martini he's now holding and Tim knows he's disappointing him. Shit. Why is he fucking up so much today that his mom wanted to see his work? He tries and tries to extend his arm, but no matter how much he stretches he can't touch it.

 _“I have an idea.”_ He feels more than hears his mother say, and stops trying to reach the corpse in order to pay her attention.

His mom turns towards the dumpster and moves her hand in a 'come here’ gesture.

Immediately, the body stands up and starts walking towards them.

He's about to scold her for that, it's going to ruin the crime scene! But he thinks better of it and just gives her a pat on the shoulder while muttering “Thanks, mommy” She just wants to help, and he wouldn't have been able to reach the body anyway, since he's so stupid he forgot that because he brought someone they all have to sit.

The body kneels in front of Tim and he takes a look at it. It's a man, he has black hair and must be somewhere between his 20 and 30, his eyes, nose and mouth have been remplaced by holes, black, dark holes. He feels like he should recognize him, as if he had his name at the tip of his tongue, but for some reason Tim can't tell who it is.

Tim holds the man's chin and starts to move his head so he can take a better look. He examines his head, the interior of his mouth, and at some point takes off the man's shirt to look for injuries on the torso. But he still can't tell who it is. It's frustrating and there's a feeling of unease he can't calm down, that only grows bigger the longer it takes him to identify the body. It's as if his stomach squeezed itself around a block of ice, his hands get heavy and his face numb, but he still can't tell who is the person. He just can't. Like he had a wall raised inside his head, a mental block. It's frustrating.

It's then that he notices he's standing up. “Fuck!” He quickly looks for the couch but can't find it, instead of the alley he's now in a surgery room, the body resting on an autopsy table. But that doesn't matter, what matters is that he's standing.

“No, no no no no” he mutters as he frantically looks for a chair and can't find any. He's an idiot, he wasn't supposed to stand up and yet he couldn't stay put. He feels his hands shake, he has to sit down, they're supposed to sit down, he brought someone to work, he HAS TO SIT DOWN.

“Wait... Brought someone to…?” He realizes, he's alone in the room. He's alone. He's alone so he can stand up.

“Ok. That's ok. Ok, ok ok. I'm ok.” He takes a deep breath and turns back towards the corpse.

Once he's sure he's calmed down he takes his instruments and starts to work. He opens the chest and examines the internal wound he somehow just knows is in there. It takes a while but soon he can retrieve the bullet. Then he moves to the stomach.

He's barely started opening the skin there when a hand takes Tim's wrist, stopping him from cutting deeper. “Hurts.” He hears someone gasp.

He looks at the body's face and is greeted with Dick Grayson, his eyes wide open, looking afraid.

Oh, right. It was Dick, he knew he had seen that man before, why did it take Tim so long to recognize his brother?

Wait, no, that's wrong, Dick isn't supposed to be dead, when did-

“Hurts.” Tim's taken out of that train of thought when Dick speaks again, and he realizes he still has the scalpel cutting deep into his stomach, his chest still open.

“Shit!” Tim hisses, taking his hands away from his brother as if burned, throwing the scalpel away, to the other side of the room. He quickly reaches for a needle and starts sewing him. “Shit, don't move, let me close it.”

“It hurts.” Dick repeats. He's still holding Tim's wrist, but he isn't making any effort to stop his movements, so he still can sew.

“Sorry, sorry, you should have said something sooner!”

“Tim, it hurts.”

“I know, I can fix it, sorry. Just stay still.”

He keeps apologizing as he works on sewing Dick, going faster and faster every time his brother complains, frantically sinking and pulling the needle, his sutures becoming messy, but somehow no matter how much time passes he hasn't finished, as if the separated skin extended into forever and no matter what he can't make a dent into it.

“You can't fix it.” Dick states. Tim looks at his face, Dick doesn't look angry, and he doesn't seem scared anymore, but the blank expression he has is worse than any of that, and suddenly Tim feels as if his stomach was filled with broken glass.

“No, I can fix it, see!” He exclaims, going back to the stitches “I can fix it, I can! You have to believe me, I can fix it!”

He's about to insert the needle again when Dick's hand tightens around his wrist, holding him in place. “Dick, let me go, I can fix it, I swear!” He begs, but instead of listening to him Dick sits up.

Tim tries to push him down with his free hand, but he can't stop him, it's like pushing on a wall. Dick sits up and his organs fall from the open chest, as if they hadn't been connected to his body at all, heart and lungs falling to the floor with a splash-like sound, his guts poking out from the lower cut, part of his intestines spreading lazily on his lap, all that accompanied by a river of blood.

“It hurts.” Dick mutters, looking at the blood flowing from his chest. It isn't stopping, a person shouldn't have that much blood. _Why isn't it stopping?!_

“You hurt me, Tim.”

“I didn't mean to-!”

Dick's other hand flies to Tim's neck, sinking his thumb in his throat, painfully.

“This was your fault! Because you couldn't be bothered to see me!” Dick exclaims, as he jumps towards Tim, the guts resting on his lap sliding out and onto the floor, like wool unrolling. The blood still pouring from the cut covers Tim's clothes, dampening his stomach, the stain extending and crawling towards his back, warm and sticky and awful.

“You knew something was going on and decided to ignore it, and now I'm dead!”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Tim tries to say as loudly as he can while Dick still takes him by the neck, but it comes out as barely a drowned whisper.

“You can't do anything right! You couldn't even find me, you decided to sit and watch someone else do all the work! Disappointment, failure, you stupid piece of shit! And now you think you can help?!” Dick's screaming now, the hand on Tim's wrist leaving it in order to join the other one around his troath. Tim pointlessly tries to pull Dick's hands away from his neck “You can't do anything for anyone! Not for your parents, not for your friends, not for me! You always fail, it's what you do, fail, fail, fail! Why are you even alive you filthy waste of space?!”

Dick's face inches closer, and it's only then that Tim sees the yellow eyes.

“Dick, let me go-” He gasps, before his brother's pushing him against the wall, digging his fingers deeper into his neck, until he can swear he's touching the back of his neck.

Tim kicks and punches and tries to get away but there's no way to move his brother, Dick stays put.

“I'm going to kill you.” Dick whispers, the heat of before replaced with a cold, weirdly familiar voice. “I'm going to take you apart piece by piece while you're awake. I will cut you open, and you will burst like a bag of trash.”

“Dick, please stop!”

“I will let your blood run until it makes a river, a river of filth and mud that will kill anything it touches. I will kill you and give your organs to Damian's pets for dinner. Do you think that would position the dog? I wonder...”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Let me go and I can fix it!”

“I will take your eyes out and piss on the empty holes, and then polish your ribs until I can use them as knives. I will take off your skin and make with it a carpet, except for your face. Your face would look nice in a little cute memorial glass cage, don't you think? Or maybe one of the owls will frame it and hang it on the walls of the maze, like a picture. Hm, would look nice.”

“Dick! If you just let me-”

“I will send whatever's left of your body to the manor, and see if they can recognize it. But they won't. They won't,  you know they won't.”

“If you just let me reach the needle-!”

“And they will cut you open, and dig into your chest and stomach, until you cry for them to stop, and admit you can't fix anything. Little Timmy the good for nothing impostor.”

Tim tries to look for something, anything to free himself, and while he moves his arms around in desperation he grabs something.

He's able to turn around just enough to see what it is. It's a tube, that extends and goes inside his father's mouth. Jake Drake looks at him with his eyes wide open, the machine next to him showing a flat line.

Jake moves his hands to remove the tube in his throat, and once he does that, looking right at Tim, he opens his mouth to say something.

From his father's mouth comes the sound of his ringtone, an old rock song Kon likes.

“What the-”

 

The sound of his cellphone going off wakes Tim up. He's resting his head on the computer at the cave, Dick's medical tests showing on the monitor. There's a blanket around his shoulders, probably Alfred's doing.

Bruce isn't around, and it isn't time for patrol yet, so that means he's out again, doing who knows what. Tim's pretty sure he's doing his own investigations on the owls, probably trying to get close to them as Bruce Wayne instead of Batman, but Tim hasn't had the time to actually look into what he's doing. He trusts he won't do something unbelievably stupid though, at least not now that they at least got Dick back.

“Fucking hell.” He mutters. “Sleeping is overrated.”

He retrieves his phone from his pocket, it's a number he doesn't recognize.

“Hi, is this Timothy's number?” A female voice says as soon as he answers. Her voice is vaguely familiar, but Tim doesn't have either the energy nor the interest to try and place her. It's his civilian phone anyway, so it's unlikely it's important.

“Yes, who is it?”

“it’s, uh, Catherine… From macroeconomics? It's about your part on the group project…”

Right. He totally forgot about that, he hasn't really been paying attention to college. He didn't even start working on the stupid project yet, didn't even remember it. What a pain.

“Right. Sorry I haven't sent it yet, I almost finished with my part.” He says as he minimizes the window and opens a blank document, it was an essay, right? He hates having to lose time this way but he should be able to finish it quickly enough “I’m actually working on it right now, Just give me twenty minutes.”

“Actually, don't send your part. We're kicking you out of the team.”

“..........Oh.”

“Sorry, but you haven't helped at all and it's due in two days. We all talked and everyone agrees we can't work with you if you aren't going to do your part.”

“No, yeah, I get it.”

“Ok… There's few time left, but maybe you still can find another team to work with? I heard Alex's team is short on members, they might just add your name to the project if you ask.”

“Alright. Thanks for the information.”

“Good luck, Timothy.”

Then she hangs up. Tim's pretty sure he's going to fail this semester, he hasn't shown up to college since they got Dick back, barely left the cave, really. There's a good chance he's already failed some of his classes just by virtue of assistance.

 

He can't find it in himself to care.

 

With that sorted out he goes back to working.

The way Dick's body works is both simple to understand and also makes no sense whatsoever. Every cell in his body has changed into something comparable to cancer, but not quite, they refuse to die naturally, but don't reproduce unless it's to heal an injury. In fact, except when he's healing his body is technically dead, in a biological sense. No heartbeat, no need for breathing, the brain and nerves show electrical pulses but that's about it, and yet he doesn't seem to have difficulties on moving or even speaking (except for those of psychological origin).

When the body is harmed the cells rapidly reproduce in order to repair the damage, almost as if coming  back to life for a short period of time, somehow knowing exactly when to stop.

Freezing them stops them from multiplying, in  a way it could be said it stiffens them, stopping the body from any movement too.  However, if their understanding of talons’ biology so far is accurate it shouldn't stop the electrical currents in the brain, which means a talon stays conscious the whole time it's frozen.

 

They aren't testing to see if that's true.

 

How the cells are able to reproduce when the body doesn't have any energy intake is anyone's guess. Dick doesn't eat, he can't, his digestive system doesn't work. His blood doesn't circulate either, so it couldn't be that the owls routinely injected talons with nutrients back in the nest.

That was one of their worries when they first got Dick back, the idea that maybe talons needed some special nourishment of some kind to keep working, otherwise it wouldn't make sense their cells could still multiply in order to heal, or even that they had energy to move, so the fear that Dick could one day simply stop moving was a very real one... But if that was the case the court would have told them, or it would break the deal they made, and so far everything points to the idea that talons don't need to consume anything to get energy, which doesn't make sense. At all.

Tim has wondered if it's even possible to exhaust the energy of a body that gets energy from _God knows where_ , if talons _do_ have a source of energy they don't know of, instead of just magically having the energy the need at any given moment, it should be possible to slow down or even stop the healing capability of a talon if it's forced to continuously heal critical injuries.

 

Other thing they aren't testing for.

 

Dick's healing capability isn't endless though. According to their information- According to what they have seen, talons die when they're decapitated and the head isn't reattached to the body fast enough, so the multiplicative capacity of the cells isn't limitless, it can't regenerate the head from the body, nor the body from the head.

It's hard to know how far that ability goes, how much can they just grow back and when do they need that part to be reattached in order to heal? can a talon regrow a finger but not an arm? Could it regrow an arm given enough time? Why can't the head stay alive separated from the body, given that talons don't actually use any of the organs that are vital for normal humans?

 

They _absolutely_ aren't testing that either.

 

So it isn't too hard to understand the basics of how it works, but only because the way it works doesn't make any fucking sense. The more Tim looks at the notes they have on Dick, the more it all looks like some science fiction bullshit. And the tests they would have to perform to shine some light on what the hell is going on are stuff none of them would ever do, that none of them would _allow_ ; Half of those would defeat the whole purpose of saving Dick anyway.

Tim has no idea how to even _start_ . So far his time has been divided between running any imaginable (any imaginable and _acceptable_ ) test on Dick, and just writing down any idea he gets, applying the few that seem promising to some samples of Dick's blood or skin, and then sitting down and see if _anything_ happens.

Nothing remarkable has happened so far.

Bruce probably understands more of what's going on than Tim, he's better at chemistry, but even he seems perplexed at just _what the fuck even is happening in Dick's body_. The farthest they have got is that the process that turned him into a talon involved a compound made of _God knows what_ and needed huge amount of electrum on all his cells beforehand in order for its effects to expand to all the body. That's it, it's been _two_ _months_ and they don't know more than what they figured out the first week. It's ridiculous.

Tim continues working for a few hours, before eventually an alarm informs him it's time for dinner. He doesn't want to leave the cave for that, but Alfred left very clear since the first weeks that he has to spend some time upstairs, want it or not.

Dinner is relatively quiet, Duke tries to start a bit of conversation, but no one replies with more than grunts and monosyllabic answers, so soon he gives up.

Tim notices Damian looking at him and frowning during the course of the whole meal but doesn't comment about it. When he finishes he tries to escape to the cave as soon as possible.

Unfortunately he doesn't run away fast enough, Damian ends cornering him before he can get to the clock.

“Drake.” He hisses, while holding Tim by the arm. He considers trying to get free and follow his original plan of retreat into the cave, but that has a good chance of escalating into a physical fight.

“What do you want now?” Tim asks, removing Damian's grip from him.

“Grayson wasn't present today at dinner.” The brat responds.

“I noticed.” Since Dick was allowed to move to the manor around two weeks ago he's been sitting at dinner, even though he doesn't eat, he just sits there without saying anything, but today he didn't. Tim didn't think much of it, he probably wouldn't think much of it no matter what Dick did, as long it didn't put any of them in danger.

He's already acting as a shell of who he was, what is a change in habits compared to that?

Apparently Damian thinks it's important enough to talk with him again though.

“He's been avoiding you all week.” Yeah, Tim noticed this time. Dick's been avoiding crossing paths with Tim for a while now, and pretty effectively too, no doubt using his enhanced hearing.

“It’s not my fault if he's trying to ignore me.” Tim responds, raising an eyebrow “Wasn't that what you wanted? That I got out of his way and stopped 'fucking him up’?”

Damian grinds his teeth and is about to say something when Tim decides that, actually, no, he doesn't need this conversation. Fuck this.

“You told me to stop reacting at his behavior or to stay away from him. I haven't seen him in a week. Make up your mind on what you want before bothering me, I'm busy working on how to help Dick.” the ‘unlike you’ goes unsaid. After that Tim just walks out before the kid can reply. And even though he can feel Damian's glare burning  the back of his head as he walks to the entrance of the cave, miraculously, the brat doesn't follow him.

 

A couple of days later, he goes to the kitchen to make some coffee before heading back to the cave. Everyone is already sleeping, so he doesn't turn the lights on, not wanting to wake Alfred up. He's turning on the coffee maker when he sees a dark silhouette in a corner of the room.

He moves to a fighting stance, but when the figure doesn't react he notices it's just Dick. Almost immediately a weird weight settled at the pit of his stomach, he's always feeling that way when he's around his brother lately.

Tim lowers his hands and goes back to concentrating on his beverage, but he can't avoid stealing a couple of glances at him.

Dick is standing very still, he's always still lately, but right now it's even more pronounced and his head is turned away from Tim. He's probably hiding his eyes, Tim realizes.

After the surprise passes he notices a teapot, heating on the stove. That's probably why he didn't leave as soon as Tim approached, he needs to keep watch of the tea so it doesn't burn.

“Are you making tea?” He tries, going for nonchalance.

Dick doesn't answer, obviously. Tim isn't sure if he's relieved or disappointed. On one hand, he hates the way Dick's voice sounds now, monotonous and lack of any life, on the other hand…

Tim finishes making his coffee. He serves himself a cup and walks towards Dick. His brother adjusts the angle of his head as Tim moves so he can't look at him directly. Yeah, he _is_ hiding his eyes.

“You can't drink anything but water. You would throw up anything else.” He says, resting his back on the wall closer to Dick as he blows on his cup.

“So why are you making tea?” He eyes Dick from behind his coffee. No reaction.

He could order him to answer, if he really wanted to hear the reason. _They can order Dick stuff._ The mere thought makes Tim nauseous.

He stays there, sipping coffee until the teapot screams. When it becomes obvious Dick won't move to save the tea Tim walks towards the stove and places the teapot on the counter. When he looks back Dick is gone.

“Fuck.”

Tim pours both the tea and what's left of his coffee down the drain  before returning to his place at the cave.

He thinks, as he looks over his notes, that maybe he could at least try to interact more with Dick.

Just the idea of being around his brother when he's… The way he's now makes his chest ache, but… He thinks of what just happened and for some reason it feels _worse_.

Everyone's been talking about how Dick's getting better, if only a little, a tiny, almost imperceptible amount. So maybe it wouldn't be too awful. Maybe.

If anything at least it will stop Damian from yelling at him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing dreams is super fun. I had no idea, this is the first time I actually write one, but I just loved writing that dream! So you can expect more dream descriptions from me in the future. 
> 
> As always please remember that I feed of comments and if you don't leave any I will literally die in real life.


	3. Conclusions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Words, right? Come here and get them my children.  
> I have planned more fics for this series but I'm not sure which should come next. So. Call 555-555-555 and vote, mark 1 for Cassandra, 2 for Jason, 3 for Bruce and 4 for "Please update your other series, the one where people turn into objects, you know the one"  
> No but really, tell me in the comments what should I do. I'm probably just gonna ignore anything you tell me and continue with option 4 and then update here with Cass' fic later, but I'm giving you the chance to sway me

Finding Dick, when Tim finally works the nerve to do so, is harder than he thought. 

At first he tries to cross paths in a way that feels casual, but his brother's able to avoid him every single time. Soon he's having to use help from the security cameras, and even then it isn't any easier, although it  _ is _ more frustrating.

Dick can hear him from several rooms away, and seems to know well the layout of the house, either because he remembers it or because he's learned it in the last two weeks. Soon what starts by him begrudgingly tailing Dick around the building turns into Tim having to plan his movements in advance to predict Dick's, in the hope they will have to encounter. Which, given how big the manor is, how many escape routes each room has, and the fact Dick (perhaps unsurprisingly) kept his proficiency in evading maneuvers, isn't easy. 

Truly, it's like trying to do checkmate with two knights.

After around three hours of the worst game of hide and seek in history Tim's finally able to take Dick by the arm as he's running away from the living room. 

In retrospective it's a stupid move. Dick hasn't shown to react well to unprompted contact, and four hours from now Tim's going to spend a good minute thinking on how lucky he's he didn't end stabbed on the stomach.

But also, if he didn't physically catch him Dick's just going to run away, and he will die before asking any of his other brothers for help, and Cass is still in Blüdhaven, and Steph's out of Gotham right now, and he doesn't know Duke that well. So, really, playing catch with the unpredictable brainwashed ninja zombie assassin is the only sensible course of action. 

 

He could also save himself the whole ordeal and just  _ order _ Dick to stop. But. Tim would rather die than actually ordering Dick anything as if he was a fucking _ slave.  _ No matter in which state he is in.

 

Dick doesn't make any movement to free himself when Tim catches his arm. Instead he just goes stiff, and stands there looking into the distance away from Tim, but it's obvious by the way his muscles tense that he's going to continue running the  _ moment _ Tim let's go.

Tim takes a moment to recover his breath, holding the door frame with his free hand, still holding onto Dick for dear life. When he stops panting he finally faces Dick, Tim just sort of… Stares.

“Uh… So, how are you doing?” 

Wow, eloquent, really eloquent Tim. A speech of the caliber of Martin Luther King Jr and Mary Fisher, maybe you should change of career path and become a motivational speaker.  _ Really _ , anyone would cry hearing such convincing words. Anyone would cry of second hand embarrassed, that is.

Dick, obviously, isn't moved by Tim's powerful speech, instead not showing any reaction. Tim tries to move so they're face to face, but each time Tim attempts to follow Dick's gaze his brother just keeps turning his head away.

“Dick, listen.” He eventually says, stopping just a moment and swallowing. “You don't  _ have  _ to avoid me, you know?” 

Still no reaction. However, when Tim moves again Dick doesn't turn his head, and he's able to see Dick's face: Way too white, pale like a corpse, his yellow eyes half open, not looking at him.

“I… Think you're doing it because you don't want to upset me, right? that sounds like you, and I know… I haven't been taking this, this whole  _ thing _ well. But...”

Dick's eyes move, so he's looking right at Tim. He doesn't tense, of course he doesn't, that would be the last thing he needs in this situation, to prove Dick he's right and should stay away from him. Tim has enough control over his responses to control that reaction, but he can't avoid trailing off.

He doesn't look away from Dick's eyes, even though he wants to, and for half a second he's proud of himself before realizing not avoiding looking at his brother is a shitty bare minimum to uphold.

“... Anyway.” He continues, after a beat. “That's… That's all.”

As soon as he lets Dick go, he walks away, exiting from the room. Tim's both relieved and discouraged by that.

He rests his back against the wall, and with a sigh takes out his phone to text Steph.

  
  
  


Why I keep fucking up?

 

ooff how bad was it

 

I didn't know what to say, so I just froze, then mumbled something about how he doesn't have to ignore me and he left

 

well that doesnt sound so bad

at least now he knows you arent gonna, like

spontaneously combust the moment he stands half a meter from you

 

You didn't see it Steph, it was bad, way too awkward for comfort 

 

all conversations with him are awkward

ive only seen him twise since he came back and it was when he was still in the cell

couldnt be worse than that

 

At least then he was acting the same with everyone, now I'm the only one he's avoiding

 

twice*

 

hes talking again, yet he refuses to talk to me, he won't even *be* in the same room as me, you have no idea how long it took me to even find him

I thought I was fine just ignoring him until we found a cure, but it's been three weeks with him around the house, months if you consider the time he spent in the cell, everyone's expecting him to get better and hanging out with him, and now I just feel like an asshole

 

hey

yeah youve been acting as an asshole 

not gonna deny that

 

Wow 

Thank you

 

shut up im not done

sure youve been an asshole with him 

the biggest asshole

an asshole the size of former planet uranus

so much that you made the kid call you out on that 

and im pretty sure if he hadnt called you out jason or i would have eventually

 

I can't say I don't deserve it, but could you stop giving me crap and move on if you have something else to say?

 

OK so

sure hes ignoring you 

but now youre just making it sound like

hes the most popular girl in school that invited everyone to her party but you or something

but ive been talking to barbara and jason

so i know hes still saying 3 short sentences per day at best

and never without someone talking to him first

so its not like hes all chatty-buddy-buddy with everyone but you

but it IS true the others are putting an effort

so its more like hes the shy nerdy kid that all his classmates still like and constantly invite to hang out and stuff

 

What's up with you and high school metaphors today?

 

not the point

the point is hes socializing with everyone because they seek him out and not the other way around

he isnt going to start talking to you if you dont do your part

so yeah you fucked up and somehow drove him away even more 

but now youre putting an effort and thats a start

if he keeps avoiding you just hunt him down again even if its just so you can say hi

hell get the message eventually

 

See, I know you're mostly right, and I'm trying to stop acting like former planet Uranus 

 

yes im right no buts 

please dont say but

i can see you typing i swear if you say but

 

. . . .

. . . .

 

dont you DARE dude

 

. . . .

. . . . But

 

GODDAMNIT!

 

Hahahaha

 

IM GONNA END YOU TIMOTHY JACKASS DRAKE

 

I believe you

Listen, I'm gonna stop acting as a jerk, ok? I know how to control my reactions, there's no excuse for showing my discomfort around him as openly as I have

*But* I don't think I can just act as if everything was exactly the same like the demon spawn does

Just looking at what he's now makes me want to cry Steph

Ok, shit, that sounded stupid and needy, forget that last message

 

man im not saying you should pretend nothing happened

honestly im not sure the way damians coping is healthy

or jasons for that matter

or barbara

come to think about it the only one doing truly ok with all this is duke

and maybe cass???

but thats another can of worms

anyways

im not saying you should be around him 24/7 and act as if everything was ok and you were super duper fine 

but just

you know

treat him like a person and be considerate?

ask him to hang out from time to time and try to talk to him even if he doesnt answer 

dont force him to do or say anything

just be there and acknowledge he exists when hes around shouldnt be too hard

  
  


Alright

I will… Wait and see if he keeps avoiding me, and if he's I will “hunt him down” tomorrow to say hi

You think that will be enough?

 

its a start!

;)

 

Ok

Take care Steph

 

bye tim

  
  
  
  
  


He doesn't see Dick until several hours later, not that he was exactly looking for him. 

He spends all night on patrol, even continuing after everyone leaves. When asked, Tim just says it's to make up for skipping patrolling so much lately, although he has to admit to himself he's also trying to distract himself from the whole business with the court. 

Everyone seems to accept his excuse and leave him to continue looking over Gotham alone. When he finally comes back the sun has been up for around an hour already.

He changes out of his uniform and takes a shower. When he goes up he doesn't feel tired yet, or maybe he just doesn't want to go to sleep, so he wanders the hallways. 

He finds Dick sitting on a chair at the foot of the staircase, reading a book with a black cover. He doesn't aknowlodge Tim with more than a quick glance, not even moving his head, and when Tim hesitantly waves at him his eyes go back to the book.

He slowly approaches and peers over Dick's shoulder, on the pages of the book there's a painting of a woman sitting on a bench and sketches of birds, Dick turns the page and there's a detailed drawing of some orchids and a headshot of a kid. 

So Dick's looking at an artbook, alright. Curiosity satisfied Tim looks back from the book and towards Dick. 

His skin is almost gray, covered with thin black veins, especially around the eyes and mouth, his cheeks and lips have no color whatsoever, he really does look like a corpse.

His brother keeps his attention on the pictures for other two turn of pages, and then turns his face and looks at Tim, so they're eye to eye. 

Tim tries to keep eye contact with those yellow eyes that doesn't look human, somehow they remind him more of a cat than an owl. He's able to resist around ten seconds before averting his gaze. 

He curses internally, he really is fucking weak, isn't he? Can't even look a pair of cat's eyes.

Tim sighs and takes a step back, remembering what he had decided earlier that day, how was it? Greet him, talk to him, invite him to hang out, treat him like a person, right.

“Hey… Dick, hi?” He says, while scratching the back of his head. He feels a little stupid, but. “Do you… Want to kill one hour or so watching a movie in the den?”

He waits a moment, then looks back at Dick, he's back at looking at the book. It's not that he expecting anything else, but, well, he just feels kinda stupid. He sighs and is about to leave when he feels someone pulling weakly from his shirt.

“What are we watching?” Says a flat emotionless voice, and Tim has to stare for a second, trying to decide if he just imagined it.

“I… Disney? You always liked Disney. We could watch that. Yeah.”

Dick closes the book and stands up, giving him the faintest of nods before walking towards the den. 

“...Right.” Tim mutters, following him. He can feel the corners of his mouth moving upwards ever so slightly. 

It's still kind of awful, and awkward as hell, and he can't stop feeling out of his deep, but, Tim thinks, he could maybe pull off stop being a moron, if only a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this is your reminder that my life depends of your comments, they're my food, my source of power. I have my soul and my motivation as a hostage, comment if you want them to live. Readers please interact

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember that I literally feed of comments and if you don't leave any I'm gonna starve, at this point anything from a single smiling face to a "I hated this, please kill yourself" would make my day.


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